


whoever shouts the loudest gets the most attention

by jewelram



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sibling Bonding, and i will stand for it no more, anybody who sees their relationship as romantic or sexual is banned, their relationship is criminally underdeveloped, until it's not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-05-08
Packaged: 2020-01-15 11:27:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18498010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewelram/pseuds/jewelram
Summary: or, five times Vanya is there for Klaus and one time he's there for her.





	1. (Eight)

**Author's Note:**

> title from "the libertine" by patrick wolf  
> i woke up in the middle of the night a couple days ago with this idea that would not let go of me so i guess i write umbrella academy fanfiction now ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯  
> as the kids are saying, 'no beta we die like men,' so let me know if you find any glaring errors?

Four is back.

He's sitting at the table when Seven goes down to the kitchen for breakfast, shoveling eggs into his mouth like they're going to disappear.

She doesn't know where he's been. Dad told them yesterday that he had, 'special training,' and left it at that. They weren't allowed to ask any questions about it either.

The others just went on like they usually did, training for when Dad decides they're ready for a mission.

It didn't make a difference. Four's power isn't really suited to combat situations anyway. At least, that's what One said when she asked him about it.

Seven doesn't like when he says things like that. Pogo says all of them are special, even Seven, and they shouldn't treat each other any differently. Or maybe he only says that to make her feel better about not being special.

She finishes her breakfast quickly and goes back upstairs, putting Four's reappearance out of her mind. It's time to begin her studies.

Today, Pogo teaches her about the Kennedy assassination and the effects it had on the country. She zones out and listens to the ticking of the clock on the wall. Any other day she would be paying attention, but today is Saturday, and on Saturdays they get to have fun for half an hour before lunch.

Pogo takes pity and lets her go two minutes early. She hugs him and hurries up to her room as quietly as she can. If Dad catches her, she won't be allowed to play at all.

She stops in the hallway, just outside of Four's bedroom. She can hear something through the door. When she opens it, she sees him sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed with his arms wrapped around his knees.

He's crying.

No matter what Pogo says, the others treat Seven differently. She's never allowed to learn how to fight with them, or join in on their games.

But Four. Four tries to include her sometimes. He comes to her bedroom on Saturdays and invites her to play dress up with him and Three. He tells her all of Two's and Six's hiding places so she can always find them in hide-and-seek.

She goes into Four's room and closes the door, sitting beside him on the floor. He gives her a quizzical look, eyes full of tears, and she smiles in response.

She doesn't say anything, not wanting to make it worse somehow. It's Four who breaks the silence.

"Sometimes I think maybe I'm a ghost, and I just haven't noticed yet." His eyes widen, like he's surprised that he said it, like he didn't mean to. "Don't tell Dad. Please, I don't want to go back."

She doesn't know what he means, but if it has him this scared, it's no trouble at all to say, "I won't tell. I promise."

He buries his face in her shoulder to muffle his cries.

Seven rubs her hand in circles on his back, like Mom does for her when she's sick. She doesn't know if it helps, but she doesn't know what to do. "You're real," she tells him.

"I'm real, I'm real," he repeats, over and over, like maybe if he says it enough times, it'll be true.

She sits with him until he stops crying, then helps him wash his face in the bathroom so nobody will know.

They walk down to the kitchen together for lunch. They've missed playtime but, when Four smiles upon seeing that Mom has made his favorite, Seven decides she doesn't mind this once.


	2. (Twelve)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He looks tired, like he hasn't been sleeping well. The bags under his eyes match the bruises on his jaw. She thinks he's been having nightmares again. She hears him when she goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night sometimes, moaning in his sleep since he can't call out._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woke up too early with nothing to do so here's this  
> in case you were wondering, all of the chapters are already mostly done, i just need to give a fuck and edit them. chapter one was the last one i wrote bc children are monsters and i'm bad at writing them. but nobody seemed to notice

There's a knock at the door.

Vanya stops playing and listens. A second later, there is it again.

"Who is it?" she calls. There's no answer, just another soft knock.

She sighs and puts her violin down to go see who it is. Out of everybody in the house, she thought it might be Mom, or even Pogo. She certainly didn't expect Klaus.

Oh right, she thinks. He's not allowed to train with the others until his jaw heals. He must have heard her playing through the wall.

He looks tired, like he hasn't been sleeping well. The bags under his eyes match the bruises on his jaw. She thinks he's been having nightmares again. She hears him when she goes to the bathroom in the middle of the night sometimes, moaning in his sleep since he can't call out.

He holds up the little notepad he's been using to communicate so that she can see what he's written there.

_Can I listen?_

Dad taught them all to write neatly, but Klaus's handwriting is messy and hard to read, with random letters capitalized. She likes it.

"Is it too quiet?" she asks. The others are in the courtyard, doing whatever it is they do when they train. She likes to fill the silence with music when they're gone. It makes her feel less alone, or at least that's what she tells herself.

Klaus is shaking his head. He flips to the next page in his notepad too quickly and tears it. The page flutters to the floor, but he's writing too hastily to notice.

The next message he shows her is messier than the first. The letters are thick, as if he wrote over it a couple times.

**_Too loud_ **

Vanya frowns. She doesn't understand why he always complains about his power. At least he has one. If she was special like he was, she would never complain or be afraid of it.

But Klaus wants to listen to her play. Nobody ever wants to listen to her play, so she opens the door further to let him in. He grins and slips past her, throwing himself onto her bed and wincing when the move jolts his jaw.

Vanya goes back to her music stand and picks her violin up. She sets the bow to the strings and starts to play.

The piece she selected isn't difficult, but it is long. By the time she finishes and looks to Klaus to see his reaction, he's fallen asleep.

Disheartened, she changes her sheet music and continues practicing.

Sometime later, Mom knocks on her door to ask what she wants for lunch today. She smiles when she sees Klaus in her bed.

"It's very nice of you to let him sleep here, Vanya," she says, coming into the room and pulling the blankets up to tuck him in. "He's been so tired lately."

After Mom leaves, Klaus shifts in his sleep and knocks his notebook onto the floor. Vanya bends to pick it up for him, but stops when she sees the last thing he wrote before he came to her room.

_They never leave me alone_

She quickly flips the page back to the one he left it on and places the notebook back on the bed. Then she goes back to her music and tries to forget it.

Klaus wakes up when Mom comes back to tell them lunch is ready. He sits up and rubs his eyes blearily. He squints at her and taps the outside of his wrist.

"Lunch time," Vanya says. "Mom just left."

He picks up his notepad and pen and writes something.

_Thank you_

She knows he isn't thanking her for the time. She wonders how many ghosts were following him around today. She decides she doesn't want to know.

"You can come back tomorrow, if you want."

He beams as well as he can with his jaw still wired shut.

She can do this for him, she thinks. She can try to chase the ghosts away, if only for a little while.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that last line alone inspired like three of these  
> jr


	3. (Fifteen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Vanya's eyes snap open. From a very young age, they were all conditioned to never ignore the sound of Dad's voice, especially when he sounds angry._   
>  _She jumps out of bed and throws her door open, leaning out into the hallway. Looking in either direction, she can see the others doing the same. Only Klaus's door remains closed._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> obviously, reggie's in this one, albeit very briefly. tbh i didn't want him here any longer than he had to be

A loud thump disturbs the silence of the night. Vanya, who was nearly asleep, pounds the wall with the side of her fist a couple times. Usually she would be worried, but it came from her right which means it was probably just Klaus tripping over himself while trying to sneak out.

She turns away from the wall and resolves to ignore it.

"Number Four!"

Vanya's eyes snap open. From a very young age, they were all conditioned to never ignore the sound of Dad's voice, especially when he sounds angry.

She jumps out of bed and throws her door open, leaning out into the hallway. Looking in either direction, she can see the others doing the same. Only Klaus's door remains closed.

Dad comes up the stairs with Mom and Pogo behind him. "Number Four!" he shouts again when he sees that Klaus isn't waiting for him.

Finally, the door opens and Klaus pokes his head out. "You rang?"

"Explain yourself!"

"It's an expression, meaning-"

"I've had enough of your nonsense, Number Four. I will not tolerate banging around in the middle of the night, and I will not tolerate you-"

"It wasn't him," Vanya hears herself say.

Dad turns his furious expression on her. "What did you say, Number Seven?"

She swallows nervously, but she won't back down now that she's started this. It would only make him angrier. "It wasn't him. It was me. I fell out of bed."

He doesn't look like he believes her, but thankfully doesn't call her out on it. He looks around and for the first time seems to notice the others leaning out of their bedrooms to watch. "What are you all doing awake? Back to bed!"

A chorus of slamming doors follows and Vanya is about to do the same, but Mom approaches and puts a hand on her shoulder.

"Are you all right, Vanya? Did you hurt yourself when you fell?" she asks.

Vanya forces a smile. "I'm okay, Mom. I think I might get a glass of water, though."

"Go lay down, I'll bring it up to you."

As Mom turns to go downstairs, Vanya sees Klaus still standing in his doorway, staring at her. When he sees her looking, he winks and slips back into his room.

Quietly, she follows him, stopping on the threshold. She hasn't seen Klaus's room in months. He always keeps the door closed.

It's a mess. Colorful clothes are strewn across every surface except, it seems, the wardrobe. The walls are covered in posters and scribbles, endless scribbles. She's too far away to read any of it, but she wonders how he was able to get high enough to write on the ceiling.

Klaus himself is hopping on one foot in the middle of the room, trying to get his other shoe on.

"Hey."

He looks up and falls over again, luckily onto his bed. "Vanya!" he exclaims, like he hasn't seen her in years, rather than two seconds ago.

"You're still going out?" she asks.

"Well if I didn't need to get out of here before, I definitely do now. Hey, thanks for covering for me back there." He grabs a pile of cash that's sitting on his desk and slides the window open. "I owe you one."

He owes her at least twenty. "Why do you do it?"

He pauses halfway out the window. He braces his hands on either side and leans back so he can look at her upside down. "Why do you care?" he counters with a wide smile.

She shrugs. "I just want to know."

He slips outside fully and turns back to grin at her through the open window. "Maybe I want you to stop me."

Before she can react to that, he's gone.

She closes his door before she leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look. i know klaus's door isn't visible from vanya's room. i know. shhhh  
> jr


	4. (Nineteen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _There's a lot of things she can say. Hello, how are you, can you conjure our brother who died a violent death that even we don't know the exact circumstances of?_
> 
> _"Why am I your emergency contact?" is what she says instead._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains mentions of klaus overdosing. it happens off-screen and he's fine, but you know  
> this was originally part of a different story, that i never wrote, which included diego, who unfortunately didn't make the final cut. he gets a shout-out  
> i learned how to do tooltips for this. hover for translation, mobile users check the end notes

The phone is ringing when Vanya gets back to her apartment. She hurries inside to get it before the machine does. "Hello?" she says into the receiver.

The voice at the other end wants to know if this is Vanya Hargreeves. Yes, it is.

It's the hospital, says the voice. Her brother has been admitted and she is listed as his emergency contact. She has more than one brother.

Klaus Hargreeves, the voice clarifies. He listed her as his emergency contact?

According to his file, yes. Why is he in the hospital?

An overdose, the voice tells her. Oh.

The phone call ends quickly after that. Vanya hangs up and immediately leaves her apartment again.

The cab ride to the hospital seems to last forever. She barely remembers paying the driver and entering the hospital.

He's awake, the nurse tells her as she's led to his room. Yes, he talks to himself. No, it's nothing they need to worry about.

Just before leaving Vanya outside Klaus's room, the nurse says that it wasn't as bad as it could've been and yes, she can take him home tonight, but he needs to be at the rehab center before noon.

Klaus was there the day she left the Academy, when Dad sent her off to school. He hugged her and told her that he would miss the Prime-8's. His eyes were glassy and he smelled of smoke, but he smiled and wished her luck.

This is the first time she's seen him since that. Since Ben.

She takes a deep breath and pushes the door open.

He's sitting up in bed when she walks in, but he's sickly pale. He's alive, but he's talking to thin air.

"Shut up, I don't- Vanya, thank god, you have to get me out of here!"

There's a lot of things she can say. Hello, how are you, can you conjure our brother who died a violent death that even we don't know the exact circumstances of?

"Why am I your emergency contact?" is what she says instead.

"You were the only one I was sure would come," he says lightly. "Also, I don't know Diego's phone number."

He says things, sometimes, that are so unbearably sad, but he says them like they're jokes and it's so very Klaus in that moment that all she can do is speedwalk to the bed and throw her arms around him as tight as she can.

"Please don't scare me like that again," she says into his shoulder. He's so much skinnier than the last time she saw him. "I can't lose you, too."

Maybe it's wrong to guilt him into staying alive, but maybe she doesn't care. She doesn't remember the last thing she said to Ben. She's glad the last thing she said to Klaus wasn't about how maybe she'll get some decent sleep without him banging against the wall separating their rooms like he's trying to knock it down.

"I'm sorry." He hugs her back and when she pulls away, he's not looking at her. He's looking at the chair by the window.

Before she can ask about it, he blinks and looks back at her, smiling a touch too widely to be genuine. "Hey, can we go bowling?"

"Klaus, you just..." She can't even say the word. "You're in the hospital. You should get some sleep."

He laughs and there's a look in his eye that she doesn't like. "Do you know how many people die in hospitals every day? I do, Vanya. I know."

So they go bowling. They laugh far too loudly, eat far too much pizza, and when they stumble back to her apartment after dark, Klaus immediately falls face-first onto her couch.

"Vaffanculo," he mumbles into the cushion.

"Excuse me?"

He waves a hand in her direction. "Not you."

She puts it out of her mind and goes to get ready for bed.

Klaus has turned over onto his back when she comes out of the bathroom. His eyes are closed, but she can tell he's not asleep. His expression is twisted into something that's not quite pained and he's mumbling something too quietly for her to hear.

He doesn't react when she drapes a blanket over him, but he does when she picks up her violin.

"What are you doing?"

"Practicing," she answers casually, picking up the bow. Her neighbor is going to complain tomorrow, but it's worth it when Klaus falls asleep halfway through the first piece.

The next morning they take a cab across town and have breakfast before finally going to the rehab center.

"Are you ready?" Vanya asks as they stand outside.

"Sure am," Klaus lies. He looks ready to bolt more than anything.

"Do you want me to be here when you get out?" she asks, but she knows what he'll say.

He hesitates, and she thinks for a moment that maybe he'll surprise her. "No."

She tries not to be disappointed. She hugs him and wraps one of her old scarves around his neck before letting him walk away from her, toward the place that's going to be his home for the next thirty days.

He turns around at the door and blows her a kiss with both hands before disappearing inside.

She smiles. He's going to be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he says fuck off. my only regret is not asking my grandmother to teach me italian swear words when i was a kid  
> the prime-8's was the name of diego and vanya's punk band in one of the short comics. diego and vanya were in a punk band  
> jr


	5. (Twenty-Five)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Even in my wildest daydreams, I never wanted to be The Séance. If our father's greatest disappointment was my not having a power, Klaus hating his was a close second. He was so sweet and vulnerable as a boy. Whatever Dad did to him—even now, I cannot say—it changed him. Klaus started self-medicating when we were teenagers and to my knowledge, never stopped."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is vanya an unreliable narrator?  
> book excerpt inspired by the one in apocalypse suite #2  
> this chapter is definitely my favorite. it came from the idea that klaus wasn't joking when he was teasing allison about adding her autograph to his collection and then i just fucking ran with it

It's her birthday. It's not just her birthday, obviously, but while she's alone in her apartment, she doesn't have to share.

She's twenty-five.

She's a published author.

Before, her siblings would make an effort, today. Luther would send a small gift that would arrive a day late, Diego would come by and have a five-minute chat outside of her apartment, Allison would call and try to fill the awkward pauses with stories about her daughter, and Klaus would tape a hilariously incorrect greeting card to her front door sometime during the week, as if not to be caught remembering the actual day.

But she's not expecting anything this year. She understands why they're angry with her, but it was her story too. She had a right to tell it. The world had a right to know she existed at all.

She spends the afternoon practicing. The first chair violin at the orchestra moved out of state last week and auditions are next Saturday. Maybe now she'll finally be able to prove to Dad that she can be special.

She's pulled out of her thoughts by something crashing in the hallway outside. When she puts down her violin and opens the door, it is to find a man sprawled out on the floor with one of his feet still hanging out of the open window. In one of his hands is a bottle.

"Klaus?" He's lying on his face, but it's definitely him.

Perhaps it should worry her that he breaks into her apartment building every year, but a lot of things about Klaus should worry her more than they do.

"Well it's certainly not zombie-robot Gustave Eiffel." He scrambles to his feet and smiles when he sees her. "There you are, my favorite author!"

She flinches, but he doesn't notice, coming closer and wrapping her up in a hug. He smells like nicotine and something stronger. "It's good to see you, Klaus."

He squeezes her once more before suddenly pulling back and patting his coat pockets with his free hand. "Oh shoot. I wanted to ask you to sign my copy," he says.

"You're not angry?"

"Sure I am," he says as he slips past her into the apartment, "but I guess it's good to know someone hates the old man as much as I do."

The opening paragraph of chapter four comes to her, unbidden: _"Even in my wildest daydreams, I never wanted to be The Séance. If our father's greatest disappointment was my not having a power, Klaus hating his was a close second. He was so sweet and vulnerable as a boy. Whatever Dad did to him—even now, I cannot say—it changed him. Klaus started self-medicating when we were teenagers and to my knowledge, never stopped."_

She shakes her head to clear it. She doesn't want to think about Dad, not today. So she changes the subject.

"Is that a new coat?" she asks. It suits him.

He looks down at it like he doesn't even know what he's wearing. "This old thing? Well, I guess it's new to me, but the guy I took it from had it for a while."

She thinks that suits him even more.

He keeps the coat on even as he digs through her cabinets and pulls out three glasses.

"What's that?" she asks as he pours whatever is in the bottle into the glasses.

"Snuck into the Academy last night and stole some of Dad's whiskey." He picks one of the glasses up and turns to give the second one to her. "Happy birthday to us."

The third glass sits untouched on the counter. She doesn't ask who it's for. She doesn't have to.

It would've been Ben's birthday too.

She accepts the glass and takes a sip. She doesn't care for the taste, and it burns on the way down, but she doesn't mind very much.

"Where are you staying?" she asks later, when the light through the window starts to fade and her glass has been emptied several times over.

Klaus is sitting on the coffee table with his legs crossed, shoes kicked off an hour earlier. He's still wearing his coat. He frowns when he sees that the bottle is empty, standing up and mumbling something about seeing what else she has. He noticeably doesn't go for Ben's glass.

"Wherever the wind takes me," he says, long after she has forgotten the question. "There was this one guy—what was his name?"

Vanya watches as he nods seriously at the empty space to his right.

"Ah, yes, Jason. Thank you. Anyway, he got boring, so I ditched him." He frowns at the label on her bottle of pills for a moment before ducking down so that he can peer into her fridge.

"You don't have to," she says. "Go where the wind takes you, I mean."

She likes to think that she knows enough about him to know that's code for living on the streets.

He gives her a flat look over his shoulder. "I'm not going back to the Academy."

"I didn't say that. I meant that you can stay here for a while. If you want."

He turns back to the fridge and doesn't say anything for several minutes. When he finally closes the door, it's with a Chinese takeout container in hand. "I guess if I live here, you won't mind when I eat this."

Living with Klaus again means she has to get used to his...eccentricities, as Pogo used to say. She's glad, for a moment, that she doesn't have any friends who would want to come over. It's weird enough for her to come home to find him leaning most of the way out of her bathroom window, smoking a joint while painting his toenails in nothing but a glittery crop top and a pair of fluorescent yellow underwear, and she grew up with him. She doesn't want to have to explain him to somebody else. She's not sure she even knows how.

Still, it's nice to wake up in the morning and find him in the kitchen, eating handfuls of cereal between sips of milk straight out of the bottle. It's mildly disgusting, but she gave up calling him out on it after day two, when she realized he wasn't going to stop.

Klaus is, as ever, a less-than-captive audience when she practices her violin in the afternoons, but she likes being able to help him sleep.

She doesn't say anything when he comes home smelling like things she'd rather not imagine her brother doing, and he doesn't say anything about how her only interactions with another person are with her elderly neighbor. It works. She even signs her book for him.

A week later, Vanya comes home to an empty apartment. The only sign Klaus was there at all is a card taped to the inside of the door. On it is a penis wearing a graduation cap, with the words, 'You've always been a dick. But now you're a dick with a degree.'

Inside the card, in Klaus's messy handwriting, it says, 'Fuck you Vanya.'

Instead of signing it, he's taped in a torn piece of paper. It's part of a page from her book. He's crossed out the word, 'Chapter,' but left, 'Four.'

She definitely deserves that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> real greeting card i found on google. also, klaus's fashion choices are immaculate  
> someone smarter than i am could probably tell me why i keep putting closed doors between them. but it's like they always say, when a little girl on a bike closes a door, she opens a window. and then klaus falls through that window  
> jr


	6. +1 (Twenty-Nine)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _How many times did they not notice she was gone?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a glance up at the tags may remind you that this story was always going to diverge from canon eventually. this scenario has been done before but i did it too so :p  
> also it's just occurred to me that klaus was technically already thirty at this point? but i've also decided i dont care ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Klaus stops walking and looks back at Vanya. It's hard with Luther in the way, but he can see her through that little window. Pounding on the door, yelling at their retreating backs.

Nothing passes through the soundproof walls of her cell, but he knows what she's saying. He can almost hear his own voice pleading with Dad to please, please let him out.

But Dad never listened, and he was left with the ghosts, so loud they nearly drowned out his own screams.

"Klaus?" Ben's voice snaps him out of it.

He shakes himself and keeps going, but barely takes another step before he remembers Diego's words.

_"Am I the only one that didn't even know this place existed?"_

None of them did, except for Dad and Pogo, maybe Mom. How many times was Vanya locked up down here before Dad started suppressing her powers?

How many times did they not notice she was gone?

He turns around and walks away from the elevator, towards Vanya.

"Don't," Luther warns as he passes.

"Don't worry, big guy," he says easily, "I'm just going to keep her company. I'm not going to let her out."

Luther frowns and looks like he's going to stop him, but Allison stumbles and he returns his attention to her. She makes eye contact with Klaus and winks.

He smiles and continues back down the hall.

"So you're going to let her out, right?" Ben asks when they're gone.

"Oh, obviously."

"Good."

Back in the room with the cell, Klaus approaches the door so he can see Vanya through the window. He waits until she looks up again and holds his right hand up, the one that says, 'Hello.'

She rushes back over to the door. He still can't hear what she's saying, but he nods and goes for the handle. Luther closed it, so it won't be anywhere close to easy, but he still tries.

Predictably, it doesn't budge. He keeps trying.

"Now would be a great time for you to help me," Klaus says.

Ben rolls his eyes but joins him, reaching for the handle. After a few attempts and a lot of concentration on Klaus's part, he makes contact.

Between the two of them, they manage to turn the handle enough that Klaus can continue on his own. It's a good thing, too, because just then Ben's fingers slip through the handle like smoke and he falls on his ass.

And because Klaus is Klaus, he laughs.

He's still laughing when he finally gets the door open and Vanya falls into his arms.

"What's so funny?"

"Just thinking about how at least Dad gave you padded walls," he lies.

She looks too tired to give him the look he always gets when he makes jokes like that, the look that all of his siblings spent years perfecting.

"What was yours?" she asks instead.

He wants to deflect, to make another joke, but something in her expression stops him. "I see ghosts. Take a wild guess."

She doesn't have anything to say to that.

He puts an arm around her shoulders and starts to lead her away from the cell. "C'mon, let's get out of here before Luther notices."

They're not that lucky.

"What are you doing?" Luther's voice reaches them in the hall, mere steps away from the front door.

Klaus spins around and sees him stalking towards them angrily. Vanya takes a small step back and Klaus steps to the side so that she's behind him.

"Hey there, big guy. Just going for a walk in the moonlight. It's such a lovely night, don't you think?"

"You said you weren't going to let her out."

"I didn't. I just opened the door and, oops! Vanya fell out." He gives a half-assed shrug.

"Klaus, Dad thought it was-"

"I don't care what Dad thought!" he says suddenly. "Dad's dead, Luther! He was a hypocritical bastard, and he's dead."

If anything, that only makes Luther angrier. "Look, just because he-"

"What? Because he missed zero opportunities to tell me how much of a disappointment I was for suppressing my power when he spent our entire lives doing the same thing to Vanya?"

Ben always said he had a knack for making people speechless. He can see him smiling in the corner of his eye.

Luther shrinks in on himself. It looks funny with how large he is. Klaus laughs out loud at that. It sounds a little hysterical, even to him.

Before anyone else can say anything, Allison comes in from the living room. Vanya slips past Klaus and runs to her, stopping less than a foot away. "Allison, I-"

She holds up a hand, cutting her off. She writes something on her notepad and turns it to face them.

_I forgive you_

And then they're crying and hugging.

And then Five appears in the middle of the room, brandishing a newspaper. "What did you do?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and the apocalypse was averted with the power of family!  
> i don't want to see anyone pooing on luther in the comments. he's been through a lot and it's not his fault he's a little slow on the uptake  
> just as chapter one was the last one i wrote, this was the first. it was actually just this originally, but then i wanted to draw parallels and add backstory and 4k later here we are  
> thank you to everyone who made it this far. thanks for commenting and bookmarking and leaving kudos and even just lurking if that's your thing. you guys are the real mvps  
> jr

**Author's Note:**

> we know a little bit about how klaus sees vanya, but since they've _never fucking interacted,_ we don't know how vanya feels about klaus, so that was a fun challenge  
> let me know what you thought. i love feedback  
> jr


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